I know that the sensation of choking and feeling your heart beat skip or beat fast are more common panic attack symptoms...but does anyone else get the feeling that they are going to hallucinate? I feel this or I feel like everything's getting dim or feel dizzy. When I look in the mirror I feel like I'm someone else looking at myself (but of course, always know it's me). I feel like I'm in a dream world or something. This occurs a lot when I'm starting a panic attack. It's like I'm afraid of seeing things that aren't there.

Anyone else have any similar feelings? Or maybe I'm just going crazy!!

Well, in this post I was only talking about the fear of hallucinating. I never actually hallucinated while having a panic attack.

I do, however, know some things about hallucinations that might help answer your question. To hallucinate is to perceive something that is not really there. There are many types of hallucinations because hallucinations can affect any sense. So this includes taste, touch, auditory, olfactory (smelling things that aren't there), and as you mentioned...seeing things.

Most of the time people think that hallucinating is just seeing things that aren't there. It is not just generalized to that sense. However, a visual hallucination could be seeing demons like you said, but it could also be seeing ANYTHING. It could be just a strange pattern on the wall, seeing objects, people, animals, anything really.

With other hallucinations, you can experience things such as feeling somebody touching your shoulder when nobody is there, hearing voices when there's nobody there, and also smelling and tasting things that you aren't acutally experiencing.

People can often tell that it's not real and that it's just a hallucination. It can still be very disturbing (such as when you hallucinate as a result of taking drugs or as a symptom of a mental disorder that causes hallucinations). Sometimes, though, people cannot tell if the hallucination is real or not.

I've get that a lot too.. I find it rarely happens unless I'm having a panic attack. Last time, I had one when I was home alone, and I began crying and breathing heavy, and suddenly I saw the ceiling moving down towards me, knocking things off of the wall, and the walls forcing their way into me. I had to run outside and feel the cold air before I could stop seeing it. I'm sorry you have to endure that, I know how terrifying it can be. I hope it goes away.

Actually Chelsipie84, I've had some of those things happen to me. I felt a hand on my shoulder(multiple times) and no one as there. I've heard noises when no one was there. And then the things I said two posts above.

Chelsipie- if it helps, hallucinations are not common with panic attacks.

However, they are possible to occur along with any other disorder really, but then that makes it a different diagnosis. The sense that you are kind've apart from reality is normal during panic, and doesn't necessarily mean you are going to hallucinate.

okay not to worry people. i feel like you're all worrying yourself. It's perfectly normal to convince yourself of abnormal slight hallusinations. i used to always feel tapping on my shoulder, it would more be a thought like "maybe i felt a tapping on my shoulder... im not sure?". theres nothing to worry about. oh and hearing things. often people can hear something slight. like cracking in the walls, and your mind will percieve it as something else. it can happen to any of your senses. stop freakin yourselves out =D nothing to worry about.

I've had this kind of episode for over 20 years. It might be a year between episodes, or a day. I get hot & sweaty (probably adrenaline) and experience weird, nightmare-like effects. At the same time, I'm aware that I'm having this thing, so I'm aware of being in both places at once.

I have anxiety, depression, allergies, migraine-like headaches, and tension headaches. I take meds for these conditions, but the docs don't know what to call or do about the going-away episodes.

I get panic attacks but it seems different than hallucinations. I haven't had a BIG panic attack in over a year where I called 911 but I didn't go to the hospital. I truly thought I was going to die but I talked myself into that this is just a panic attack and I'm going to be okay.
The wierd thing is I'm hallucinating that Heath Ledger is in my family room in his Joker costume even as I type this ( and haven't even seen the movie). I'm in my 3rd trimester of pregnancy. I don't know, maybe hallucinations are common during pregnancy, and I haven't had any panic attacks durign my pregnancy at all since I've been relaxed and excited. I don't think hallucinations are always part of panic attacks, it depends on the individual. I haven't suffered from them until now, and it's freaky!

I recently started to hallucinate all of the time especially really late at night. Seeing demons charging at you or your brother standing over you with a knife while you're in bed is not the best way to spend an evening. Often accompanying these hallucinations are a few seconds of me screaming unintentionally out of pure terror, jumping down flights of stairs or throwing myself against walls also unintentionally. These attacks can be absolutely horrible, but just always remember it will pass and you are safe (except jumping down stairs that can do some damage ).

There is actually several studies and diagnosed cases about hallucinations with Panic attacks.
They are linked to epilepsy.
Most doctors do not know that it is epilepsy because of the similarity in symptoms.
That is where the hallucinations tell a different tale.
I am a psychology major in college and because of my own "panic disorder" I began to research further.
My "panic attacks" had some of the symptoms of panic disorders but there were a lot of symptoms, that I had, that were not explained and that is when I stumbled across the left temporal epilepsy theory.
I am currently still studying this theory

I have panic disorder and i often experience either a feeling that someone has their arm over me whilst i am trying to sleep and i see people out of the corner of my eye, every car that is standing still i think it is rolling towards me until i get closer. I have had this for the last year and i am so used to it now it doesnt bother me, i know its just my mind playing tricks on me and its nothing to worry about, its all part of your mind trying to make something up to be afraid of in order to go into panic mode again.

I have googled Hallucinations, and panic attacks and this is where it got me. Please can someone just confirm that perhaps I am not losing the plot?

Had a few panic attacks, but not sufferer as such, tend to strike when under serious stress, anxiety etc, but nothing too bad. Sleep like a baby, work like a dog.

One night, drifting off to sleep, and I got this really sudden (almost like deja vu, but thick, dense, like I was dreaming, which I could have been because I was dozing off) sense of absolute terror, real fear, complete with pictures (my eyes had been closed) of perhaps what felt like it could've been the dream from the night before (nothing bad - queueing outside class in school circa 1996). I felt it in my stomach, I can't describe it, other than the panic attack stomach. But I couldn't sleep, couldn't settle, heart racing, absurd thirst, all night.

I could dismiss this as a sort of nightmare I guess, but it happened again in work - mid-conversation with a colleague. Completely conscious. No anxiety, not tired, not stressed well, maybe a little over-worked, but nothing out of the ordinary. And it was like that uncontrolled falling feeling - when you're asleep and falling, and it wakes you up? or on roller-coasters? My chest leaped, my vision went blurry, I began to sweat, went dizzy, and I felt like I wasn't there - like I was watching something that I had watched before.
I really worried the girls in work, they said I just suddenly switched off - I'm not quite sure of the conversation I was having at the time, nor the walk to get outside for some fresh air.

Anyway, is this anything like what anyone else has experienced? I'm quite scared, and would be grateful if someone could just tell me I'm not mad? Or that I need to drink more green tea to make it stop?

Gemma, you are in a much better situation than what am going through.
Being panicky and abnrmlly anxious have always bn wth me from as far as i can remember, bt they were very mild. But somewhere ths year , around April i was visited by relatives of the two, depression and sleeping problems, insomnia.
Ever since, my life has taken a very weird and difficlt turn wth events happenng that have made my best friends and family eye me wth suspicion. The people who matter most no longer trust me. I even went to the extend of not trustng myself. I cnt keep up a decent conversation wtht thghts of me doing smthng akward like talkn a non related topic, or even slappng somebody. Ths has added another problm of social phobia.
But i have found moderate physical exercise espclly in the mornng coupled wth a little bit of meditation like prayer helps keep the evils at bay during the day.
You are not crazy!!,

I've had panic attacks for over 20 years. The meds for them, benzos and SSRI's are generally effective. However, I have recently had hallucinations when I am on the threshold of sleep. It's calling waking dreams and is dream material coming through when you are awake but almost asleep. Clonopin will also cause hallucinations. Panic attacks generate hallucinations sometimes. Unfortunately in no case does one have the luxury of going crazy, much less dying. We have to stick around, basically sane and aware, suffer through it and try to combat it. cd

Hyperventilation is perhaps more common among panic attack (etc.) sufferers than is many realize. The imbalance of O2 and CO2 thus produced in the brain can contribute to some unreality sensations, though I doubt hyperventilation's effects alone generally suffice to explain the hallucination-like sensations.

It's as if a heightened state of anxiety sometimes produces a gap between the imagination and an acute empirical awareness ... or a dual and simultaneous awareness of two states of consciousness. How does Belief feel the moment s/he has been struck in the face?